Over the past century, improvements in health care and advancements in biology, chemistry, and medicine have extended the average lifespan of humans and companion animals, including horses. However, we are now facing new challenges with the paradox of an older population with increased longevity, while confronted with the potential for many years of poor health. A better understanding of the mechanisms leading to a decline in physiologic function with age would provide new predictive biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.

It has been well-documented that the aged, including horses, have increased susceptibility to and prolonged recovery from infectious diseases, poor responses to vaccination, and increased incidence of various cancers. Furthermore, it is now accepted that chronic inflammation (inflamm-aging) is a major underlying condition of many age related diseases, such as arthrosclerosis, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, dementia, vascular diseases, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.

In anti-aging research, much attention is focused on nutritional interventions as practical, cost-effective approaches to mitigating this age-related breakdown in immune function. These natural dietary compounds found in a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds are promising candidates in helping to combat the effects of aging. They possess broad biological activities: anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, detoxification, regulating signaling pathway, and modulation of enzyme activities (see sidebar at left).

Since aged horses (those 20 years and older) have increased levels of inflammation, and treatment with long-term use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as flunixin meglumine and phenylbutazone can pose health problems, we are interested in nutritional interventions to counteract this inflamm-aging process